I've been writing columns for a number of years now on the state of the online lead generation space. One of the things that strikes me, in the nine years I've been in this space (now THAT is a frightening thought), is that not a whole lot has changed at the core. Sure, there have been outwardly facing changes -- we had "data collection," "data dumping," etc. --that just led to massive amounts of spamming. Now consumers have managed to manage their spam, and email is as strong as ever. Different, but stronger.

Every time a library adds new books to its collection, the old books aren't thrown away or forgotten. It's the volume of books within a library's collection that help the library maintain the repeat traffic in and out of its doors -- not just the newest titles added to its collection this week. Sure, maybe the new books get prominent placement at the front desk as "recent additions," but it's the vast nature of a library's holdings that makes people come back. Just as a library drives foot traffic, online publishers should be looking to apply the same principles to ...

The controversies surrounding ad networks have been at the top of the news this year. Now, they are migrating from the CPM/display world to the realm of cost-per-lead advertising. However, the issues are different. In display, much of the furor concerns whether publishers are wise to allocate inventory to third parties where there is a loss of control. But in cost per lead, the concern is in another direction: lead quality. And the answer is transparency.